Sri Lanka blasts: 6 Indians among 290 killed, 24 suspects arrested

Colombo, Apr 22: At least six Indians have been killed in a string of eight powerful blasts, including suicide attacks, which struck three churches and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, officials said on Monday.

The toll in a series of eight blasts targeting mostly churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Sunday has risen to 290, a police spokesman said Monday.

More than 500 people were wounded in the blasts, he added, in the deadliest violence since the end of the country's long-running civil war a decade ago.

An improvised pipe bomb discovered close to Colombo's main airport was successfully defused by the Sri Lanka air force, police said.

Meanwhile, authorities lifted a curfew in the Sri Lanka on Monday, a day after 290 people were killed and about 500 wounded by a string of bombings that tore through churches and luxury hotels on Easter Sunday.

There was still no claim of responsibility for the attacks on two churches and four hotels in and around Colombo, the capital of predominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka, and a third church on the country's northeast coast.